The huge volume of email flying through the internet has resulted in a substantial amount of information flowing down to the individual. Inability to manage this inflow can lead to information overflow and communication paralysis. The author articulates three practices to help manage the massive volume of email most corporate professional's face on a daily basis.

The turn of the century brought with it not only a new millennium but also a revolution in the way we communicate. The communication revolution I am referring to is - Email. Proof of the email communication revolution is highlighted by messagingonline.net who notes that since the beginning of 2000 the number of emails per year in the US exceeds the volume of standard mail sent through the USPS. Given that the US postal service has a volume of approximately 200Billion pieces of mail (normalized without 9/11) over a year, that's a mighty impressive feat by email. It is estimated (same source) that within the next few years over 1 Trillion email messages per year will circulate through out the US. The huge volume of email flying through the internet has resulted in a substantial amount of information flowing down to the individual. Inability to manage this inflow can lead to information overflow and communication paralysis. In a corporate setting this can be particularly troublesome given the heavy reliance, especially in the technology sector, on email as the primary method of communication. This article articulates three practices to help manage the massive volume of email most corporate professional's face on a daily basis.

Schedule Email Time: This may seem like a simple concept, but can be difficult to implement. The practice simply put is to schedule time, on a daily basis, to review and respond to your emails. The most effective segmentation I've seen is ½ to 1 hour blocks on your schedule, 2-4 times a day. Scheduling your email time means that you religiously address email at that time, and it also means that you DO NOT address email outside of that schedule. In order to ensure that you actually stick to this schedule, and don't fall off the wagon, schedule enough total time during a day to get through substantially all (80%) of your email. There are considerable benefits from following this approach. First it enables you to focus on and complete the work at hand. Second, it leads to your being more thoughtful in email threads and can often result in yours being the voice of reason in a ping-pong exchange. Third, it enables you to concentrate on both high priority tasks and high urgency tasks (more on that below). To be clear this tip is not advocating that you don't respond in a timely fashion to other's emails. In fact the opposite is true; the regularity of a scheduled time to focus on email and the large volume of email you receive ensures you will often be more responsive with this method, not less.

The One Touch Rule: Essentially the concept here is to reduce the number of times you "touch" (read, review, process, etc.) a piece of email down to one. Many individuals make the mistake of going through their mailbox with the intent of taking action on the mail "later." This practice usually results in one of two undesirable outcomes, a long delayed response or more often a substantial pile-up of mail in the inbox. Instead the goal should be to take immediate action on an email as soon as it is read. Examples of immediate action that can be taken on an email include, filing it, responding to it or deleting it. The key is to get it off your plate permanently via action. Not to leave it lingering around requiring further action in the future. This may seem like a simple enough rule, but often its implementation requires you to be ruthless in managing your email box. Given the ever increasing volume of email professionals face today, what other choice do they have?

Email as communication mechanism and medium isn't going away anytime soon. If even one of the tips mentioned above helps you more efficiently manage your email then it will save you substantial amounts of time on a daily basis.